


A Brief Madness

by Polly_Lynn



Category: Castle
Genre: F/M, Friendship/Love, Male-Female Friendship, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-17
Updated: 2015-06-19
Packaged: 2018-02-13 12:43:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2151162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's there, even though he's by her side. Even though he's sprawled in the chair that's his, taking over a corner of workspace that's rightly hers. He's shoulder to shoulder with her by the board. He's with her, helping or hindering. Entertaining himself or distracting her. And still it's there: 'It doesn't mean I'm not still mad'."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is rather open ended. I have an end point for it, and I've roughed out several moments on the road to it, but each of those is something like a stand-alone. I'll post them as chapters, but they're closer to loosely linked stories set in early S4.
> 
> This first chapter takes place in and around "Kick the Ballistics" (4 x 04)

* * *

" _ira furor brevis est_

(Anger is but a brief madness.) _"_

_—_ Horace

* * *

She thinks about it a lot. All the time, really, and she doesn't know where the headspace comes from. The energy.

She's still in pain. A _lot_ of pain, and it drains her. She's exhausted, between work and physical therapy and just the background of it. How much it takes out of her to manage the pain itself. She sleeps harder than she ever has in her adult life. Deep and not quite dreamless and it's there. All the time. It's the last thought that sparks before her mind goes dark at last. It's a melancholy wave crashing against the shores of sleep.

_It doesn't mean I'm not still mad._

* * *

She throws herself into work, because that's what she knows how to do. It's always been a foolproof solution. She fills her mind with the details of each case. No cracks at all for her own darkness to fill.

Except it doesn't seem to be working. Not when it comes to this. It's there any time she lets herself slow down. It's immediate. Present and demanding when she closes her eyes at her desk and pinches the bridge of her nose. It's there when her mind is locked up and she needs to come at things a new way.

It's there, even though he's by her side. Even though he's sprawled in the chair that's his, taking over a corner of workspace that's rightly hers. He's shoulder to shoulder with her by the board. He's with her, helping or hindering. Entertaining himself or distracting her. And still it's there.

_It doesn't mean I'm not still mad._

* * *

"It seems to preoccupy you, Kate."

There's a thread of something in Burke's tone that makes her want to apologize. Exasperation, she'd call it, if he were the type of man who'd let such a thing bleed through, even with her.

"I just . . ." She runs her hands over the leather arms of the chair. "I don't understand it."

"Why he's angry?"

"Why he's not."

They blink at one another across the room. Each half in shadow, half in light, and she suddenly thinks how much of the year is gone. It seems like a non-sequitur. It seems like she should know that it's not.

"He _should_ be mad." She looks to Burke for something. Approval or confirmation. He regards her calmly, though. No exasperation now. No errant flicker of eyelids. He's waiting for her to come around to it. The end point he knows is there, even though she can't imagine what it is. "He should be mad, even without . . ."

The words just dry up. The breath underneath them. Burke takes pity on her for some reason.

"Without the details you haven't shared," he says. Calmly, of course. Neutrally. "About your shooting."

"Without the lie," she snaps. It hurts. Sharp, physical pain like always. Familiar enough she knows how to hide it. To keep her body still and her face blank. She doesn't feel like another lecture on the fact that _psychosomatic_ doesn't mean _imaginary_. She hardly hesitates. She barrels onward. "Even without that, I just left. For three months. Three _months._ _"_ She looks out the window. Shivers, as if fall is creeping in at her collar. "He should still be mad."

"What makes you think he isn't?" Burke sets his pen and pad aside. Apparently they don't need props for this.

He must think she knows what he's getting at. She doesn't though. If she were still in the habit of faking her way through sessions—and she's not—she wouldn't even know where to start right now. Still, he seems confident. He threads his fingers together. A knot resting on one thigh that says there's plenty of time for her to get there.

"He's back," she says at last. She makes her case. Flattens her palm against the leather and taps at it, ticking off points on her fingers. "He's there. Every day. He brings me coffee and makes stupid jokes and says smart things I wouldn't have thought of. And it's . . . "

"It's like before you were shot."

He makes it a statement, not a question. He makes her do the work of contradiction.

"Not exactly." She hangs her head. "Not exactly like before."

* * *

Afterward, she notes the differences, big and small. It's not that the session was a breakthrough. It's not that she needed Burke to guide her by the hand. Not really. She just counts them now. She pays attention. Gathers data. It _preoccupies_ her.

There's a hard edge to his smile some mornings. Like he's had to practice to get it right. He's too quick to laugh. To edge away from moments that would have conjured a different kind of smile in him when the year was young.

There's a narrow-eyed look he gives her when anything in the neighborhood of that day comes up. Like it's the moment after he last saw her in the hospital and he can't reconcile this version of her with the one from back then. Like he can't stitch together the missing months, and he doesn't quite believe she isn't dying.

There's a heavy gaze that falls on her and stays. Even when she looks, sometimes. Even when she catches him, he doesn't turn away, and she thinks he knows. Her fingers press against her scar. Pain flares and she thinks he must know.

But most of the time she realizes he doesn't. That he believes the lie or he wouldn't be here. He'd never have come back if he knew.

He asks her outright one morning. She reaches for her coffee. Smiles at his recitation of her order. It's a little too bright. A little forced on both sides. It's _this_ difference she feels at home with. The difference she thinks she might deserve.

She reaches for her coffee, and she's not expecting the pain. It's real enough. The year is waning and it's cold for October. PT is getting harder, not easier, and her therapist blames her for not taking the extra time for warm-up and cool-down. She's not expecting it. She moved wrong, that's all. It has nothing to do with him. With her mind. It has nothing to do with what he does or doesn't know.

That's what she tells herself, but he asks outright.

"Surgery?"

It throws her. The word is sharp. Quick. But his hands make themselves into fists like he's trying not to reach for her, and it's worry she hears in his voice. Fear, not anger.

She shakes it off. She smiles and squints into the sunlight of the waning year. Into the shadows the overpass throws over everything.

"Yeah. Sometimes the scar pulls a bit."

There's a pause. Brief enough that she wonders if she only wished it. If, for a moment, she thought it might pass away.

But he asks outright.

"And you still don't remember anything about that day?"

There's no anger at all. Just the other kind of difference, gathered up and balanced on the moment between them. There's hope. Tentative wishes of his own that he shares in this new, sidelong way. That she echoes back when she's brave enough.

There's no anger, and it's like the pain was a prophecy for all the good it does her.

"No. It's blank."

* * *

She thinks about calling Burke. He's generous with his time. Good about end-of-day maintenance sessions when she needs them. But it feels childish.

It's Tyson who's gotten under her skin. She tells herself, but that's not it. She hurts for them. Ryan and Castle both. She hates the memory of that hotel room. How it haunts the two of them. She wishes there were a way to make them see this isn't their burden. Her decisions brought them here as much as anyone's, and they carry it together.

All of that is true. But none of it explains the pain in her chest.

_No. It's blank._

* * *

It's late, then it's later. When she's too exhausted to pace, she falls into bed. Her eyes won't close, though. She fades out and up, her consciousness buzzing around the edges of the pain. Examining it in all its phases. Throbbing and dull, now sharp. A quick, searing slice that dissolves into an itch.

That drives her on to her side. She wraps her arms around her head even though it hurts. Even though it strains muscle and skin and scar tissue. It takes her mind off the itch. That's the plan, anyway, but it just adds to it. Piles on.

The phone catches her eye. An oblong of white she doesn't recognize at first because she's exhausted. She hurts.

She reaches for it anyway. Ignores the tall white numbers that mean something. Ignores everything sane and reasonable. She sends him a text.

_You still mad?_

It's done before she can stop herself. Before the sheer strangeness of it catches up with her. But the pain lessens. She breathes in, a little deeper each time. An experiment. Repetition of it. It's lessens.

The minutes tick by. She idly wonders how she'll explain it in the morning. If he'll even mention it, or if it's too strange even for him, and he'll be polite. She wonders if the scar will let her lie. If it's specific to him. If it's specific to _that_.

_No. It's blank._

She's still wondering when the phone rings. When his face fills the screen and she stares in horror. Confusion, even as as her thumb comes down over the green button. _Accept._

She raises it to her ear. Forgets she's the one who's supposed to say something. He does, too. He doesn't wait.

" _Mad about what?"_

His voice is thick with sleep, but there's a keen note of curiosity. Of hope, she thinks, though it must feel like half a dream to him.

"Castle," she whispers like there's someone else she might disturb. "Why are you _calling?_ _"_

" _Middle of the night."_ His voice is faint, then loud, like he's drawing his hand over his face. Like he's willing himself awake. Willing sense into a moment that's sheer madness. _"Fat fingers. Can't text."_

"Oh."

That answers that, she supposes. Except it doesn't really. He hasn't answered either question, and she doesn't know how to ask again. She doesn't think she gets to ask again.

" _Kate,"_ he says when the silence stretches out too long. She has her answer, right there in the space of her own name. How it sounds in his mouth. He could leave it there. It's the middle of the night. But he's careful with her. However angry he is—he _still_ is— he's careful with them, like always. _"Mad about what?"_

She thinks about it. It's too big to pick apart. All the things that invite anger. Dismissal. Concession that this isn't worth it. She's not worth it. It's too big to leave there, unspoken forever.

"Summer," she says. "Waiting. Three months."

He's quiet. They're both quiet in that laden-down way that leaves no question that they're both still there. That the call hasn't dropped. No convenient black hole has opened up to make an end of her.

" _Yeah."_ There's no malice in it. Nothing especially kind, either. It's a fact. _"Still mad about that._ "

"Ok." Her scar throbs, but it's more to do with an all-over ache. Sadness at work all through her, and the pain settles into something manageable if she works at it. Something that might let her be long enough to close her eyes.

"Ok," she says again. "But I'll see you tomorrow?"

" _Of course,"_ he says swiftly. _"Of course. I'll be there."_

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "She hates Serena Kaye . . . She hates how _unburdened_ the woman is."

  
"You could be the moon

and still be jealous of the stars."

— Gary Allan

* * *

 

She hates Serena Kaye.

She hates her for the professional nuisance she is. She hates her cocktail dresses and sleeveless business casual and her meticulously careless up-do. She hates her unflappable smile and the double-take she inspires in every single man who catches sight of her.

She hates how _unburdened_ the woman is. That she thinks nothing of striding into Gates' office or pawing through evidence, then flitting off to follow some mysterious-sounding lead. She hates that utterly unhampered by procedure or professional courtesy or boundaries of any kind.

She hates how easily the woman walks in the world.

* * *

 

 

He's intrigued by her. Of course he is.

She's gorgeous. Put together within an inch of her life, but it's worse than that. There's more to her than a well-filled pencil skirt and drape-neck top. She has good instincts, and there's nothing to keep her from following them. Nothing at all. She sees things from strange angles, and it's like reality shakes out in new ways to suit her. She knows her stuff. She has an eye for detail and the tenuous connection that tugs just the right thread. There's no reason in the world he _wouldn't_ be intrigued by her.

And she's charmed by him.

How could she not be? He's rich—and she's unabashedly frank about her ambition in that particular area. He's attractive, smart. Charming when he wants to be, and more charming than that when he's not even trying. When he's wowed and shows it. When he has no game at all, because he's just as caught up in cool could-have-beens and might-yet-bes. When he's watching like there's a new story unfolding, and he wants to be the one to write it.

Of course she's charmed.

 

* * *

 

"I asked."

She blurts it out with something like seven minutes to go in the session. She feels beaten down and ganged up on. Like Burke is on Castle's side in this. Like he's spent the last forty-three minutes, cold and logical. Pulling childish things from her mouth about how it's _supposed_ to be. She feels closed off and buttoned up and _cornered._ She wants a little fucking credit.

"I asked if he's still mad."

She looks up, defiant enough that she can feel her lower lip pushing up. She chalks another one up for childish.

Burke doesn't look surprised. He looks like he was expecting it. The admission, if not the specifics. "How did that come about?"

"Don't you want to know what he said?"

"If you want to tell me."

He pauses long enough to call her bluff. She can't bring herself to say it. _Yeah. Still mad about that_.

He goes on more gently. "But it seems to me that the asking is more remarkable than the answer." He waits. Gives her some kind of chance to redeem herself, but she's caught up trying to get a handle on the anger swelling in her throat. "It was a brave thing to do, Kate."

She laughs at that. A few sudden, scalding tears cling to her lashes. She swipes them away. "I texted him. In the middle of the night. So, not that brave."

"And what did he say?"

"Oh, _now_ you want to know?" It's not a joke she's trying to make. She knows better, and it's never particularly been her style. Not in this room. It's not a joke. It's avoidance. She looks at the clock. Three minutes. It's just another childish thing. She kicks at the carpet. "He called. He's braver than me."

"Different, maybe," Burke says evenly. "Not braver necessarily."

"He made me say." She finds herself snapping at the man. Feeling some out-of-the-blue need to defend Castle that she doesn't understand.

_Kate. Mad about what?_

"He made me say." She looks up as she repeats it. Burke, for once, seems perplexed. Like this is one thing he genuinely might not know already. Like he's not at all sure which of her many sins she'd have picked. "Summer. Me leaving. He's still mad."

He nods. Somehow there's nothing _I told you so_ about it. He leaves an inviting pause, but she's silent. Sullen, if she's honest with herself, and there it is again. The therapist's equivalent of exasperation. The same as last time. "Do you think he's punishing you?"

" _Punishing?_ " She gapes at him.

"Choosing to work with this woman." He steeples his fingers. If he's aware of the clock, he gives no hint of it. "Showing personal interest, perhaps. Does it feel like he's retaliating?"

"That's . . . he wouldn't . . ." She worries the zipper of her sweatshirt. She works it up and down and up again, like it has answers in its silver teeth. She shakes her head. "It's not him."

She means too much by it. More than she knows. Certainly more than she can explain. And anyway, her time is up. The clock flips over. She gestures to it, silent as she uses her toes to scoot her shoes out from under the chair. She slips into them and pushes to her feet.

Burke doesn't follow. He watches her in a way that's unusual. That's unusual in itself. Some weeks it seems like all he does is watch her, and still, this is unusual somehow. He's at it a long moment before he does finally plant both feet and stand. He's silent, too, until they're at the door. Even then, she's the one to reach for the handle. To pull it open. He waits for that.

"I hope we can pick up with this next time." He gives her the warm smile that always ends things. The one that somehow never feels canned or rehearsed. "One last thing to think about in the mean time, though."

He catches the door. He stops her momentum and keeps it from swinging too wide. She looks up at him, startled. Almost laughing. It's very Columbo. _One last thing._

"Your pain — " he brushes his own sternum with his fingers. " — it's better this week." It's not a question. Not in the least. "Let's talk about why that is next time."

 

* * *

 

The moment comes too soon.

He's there, at the precinct, just when she figured he wasn't coming at all. It's late, and she's been watching the elevator, distracted and hating herself for it. And, still, after all that, the moment is there sooner than she's ready for.

He's alone, at least. She feels one knot in her gut give way, then notices he's empty handed. No coffee.

_Do you think he's punishing you?_

She doesn't. In the clear, stubborn place in her heart that's his, she _doesn't_ think that. It's not him. She _knows_ that, but this is sooner than she's ready for. She's caught in this dark, angry, _childish_ spiral, and he didn't bring her coffee.

She's the one who brings up Serena. He's surprised. More than surprised. He's bewildered. Hurt, and it's another thing she's just not prepared for. She's not prepared to see it gutter and grow dim, that spark of hope that's burned bright, however mad he is. Understanding. It's burned bright since they talked on the swings.

_Oh . . . you thought that we were . . ._

She hardly hears him. She hardly hears herself. This is all too soon.

_So then, you think I should … pursue it?_

_You know, I mean, suit yourself._

No. He's not the one punishing her.

 

* * *

 

She sees the back of him. Hears the angry rattle of a thumb jamming on the elevator button, but he's going before her eyes even pick it out. That tiny, abandoned circle of light. All she sees is the back of him. Broad shoulders disappearing through the stairwell door like he's too furious to wait.

She calls after him. Jerks herself out from behind her desk, knocking into things and calls after him. It's audible eventually. On the third try or so, he misses a step. That's how she knows. His body twitches hard, like he wants to turn back but won't.

She puts on a burst of speed. It comes from somewhere. Desperation or remorse. Another impossible question she's suddenly frantic enough to ask. Wherever it comes from, she catches him. She slams down a flight and a half of stairs. She gains on him. Her fingers snatch at his sleeve and catch.

He spins toward her, eyes flashing. "Beckett!"

It bounces off the concrete, sharp and angry. Amplified.

"You're going." She drops his sleeve. She tugs her fingers up inside her own like she's embarrassed by them. She is. She's embarrassed by every inch of herself. She feels small and tired, the black fury that's been driving her all day is gone. Suddenly gone.

"Yes."

It's all he means to say. He folds his arms and she can see him struggling to leave it at that. Struggling to make _her_ drag this out, if that's what she wants, and she _does_. She wants to keep him here. She wants to talk. She doesn't want him to go, but she stands there, stupid and silent.

He rolls his eyes. At himself or her, it's hard to say. Both of them probably. "You have Serena . . ."

"She's not in holding." The words shoot out of her. A trailing spark of anger.

"Not exactly unsupervised, either." It's just as angry, but he closes his fist around it. Calm, like when he started down this road. Defending Serena. "Ryan and Esposito will come back with Falco, or they won't. Not a lot for me . . ."

"You're mad." She's not sure what makes her cut in then and there. Something about bravery maybe. Or fear. He's gathering himself up to go. She doesn't want that. "You're . . . angry." She winces. Hates the way the last word wavers when she means something like respect by it. He's not _mad_. It's not a playground squabble. He's _angry_ and righty so. "You're angry with me."

"Yeah . . ." He shakes his head at her. "Yes." The precision of the _S_ is fury in itself, and she wonders for half an instant if he's making fun. But he hangs his head and the weary set of his shoulders gives lie to his own words. "I'm angry. I was just doing what _you_. . ."

" _No!"_ She cuts in again, forceful and loud and her cheeks burn. "I mean, _yes_. You're mad about . . . Serena. But you're angry with me." She scuffs her toe against some ancient piece of gum lacquered on to the concrete. "You're still angry."

He's silent. He watches her a long, hard moment. She feels him, waiting. It drags her gaze from the step below. She meets his eyes and tries not to flinch.

"Do you think that's why _I_ think she didn't do it? Because I'm angry with you?" The words are quiet. They're careful for now, but she hears the keen edge underneath. "Do you think I would undermine . . ."

"No," she says, just as quietly. She sinks every bit of belief into it. Every bit of meaning that tumbled out of her back in Burke's office. _It's not him._ "I know you wouldn't, Castle. I know that."

"Then what is this, Kate?" He lifts his palms. He hunches his shoulders and gestures to the endless space climbing above them. The filthy walls that carry every syllable back to them.

"I wish I knew." She sinks down on the step, tired all of a sudden. "You were going. And you're still . . ." She props her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands. "I don't want you to still be mad."

"Your technique could use some work."

She laughs and he laughs, but it's hollow. The filthy walls send it back, and even that sounds angry. They're out of practice. Out of joint and timid with each other. With good and bad, both.

He takes a step down. One heavy foot, then the other, and she thinks for a leaden moment that he's going now, but he sinks beside her. He settles himself, his shoes and hers all in a row.

"I don't want to still be mad." He half turns to look at her, then looks way quickly. "I don't _like_ being still mad. And I'm kind of . . . I'm afraid not to be."

She nods like she understands. She does. Her version of it any way. The convenient anchor of fury. It's something familiar, though it hurts to think of him knowing anything about it. She thinks of him as light. Rising. She wants to free him from the weight of this if she can. Wherever they end up, whatever becomes of them, she wants to do that. She wants to be brave, but she doesn't know how to start. She has no idea, so she just . . . does. She makes a beginning.

"How . . ." Her voice fails her. Or maybe she just can't hear over the pounding of her heart. "How was your summer?"

He goes stiff at her side. He's half in shadow and staring at his feet, but it's like she can feel how wide his eyes go. She can feel the thing that's half sob, half some disbelieving sound. The thing that chokes him, then sends the words barreling out, sharp and angry. "Pretty fucking terrible."

She nods at that, too. Her chin bobbing up and down like one of those stupid glass birds, and she makes herself open her mouth. She steels herself to it—his anger—and makes the words come. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"No." It's flat and emphatic. Angry, but under glass, like he knows what she's up to and he won't let her have it. It's immediate and not exactly kind, but even then, his fingers twitch like he might have reached for hers in another life. "Not in a stairwell. Not like this."

"But when you want to . . ." She tears her attention from the battered metal strip the edge of the step below. She shifts to face him. "If you want to . . ."

He lets her words hang there long enough for the concrete to give them up. "I'll call."

He means it. She knows he means it, but she asks any way. "Even if it's the middle of the night?"

"Even if."

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Slow in coming, I know, and I am not sure how much farther my head will get with this. But I had much of this roughed out and it came together recently.
> 
>  


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Things fall into place between them. He's amped up by the possibility of ghosts. Tugged by the current of story stretching back and back. Twenty years. A hundred. She teases him, a little rough. He pushes back, bolder with her than he's been. He lets his mind wander and his mouth run like he hasn't in months, and it's like this tight, tentative way they've been with each other is breaking down." Set during and after Demons (4 x 06)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Again, sorry that these come slowly and unexpectedly. Once again, I had the beginning and the rest came only recently.

 

 

Beauty of whatever kind, 

in its supreme development, 

invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.  
—Edgar Allan Poe

 

* * *

 

 

"You look nice."

The words come to her across an expanse of sidewalk. They pull her back around to face him. It's late, and they've already said their goodnights, but everything about him says it's not an afterthought. It's something he's decided on. His feet are planted, and there's a stubborn lift to his chin like he's been working his way up to it. Like he's prepared to argue the point with her.

"Today," he blurts when it's clear she's not arguing. When it's clear she's not saying anything at all. He blushes the next second and twists in place. His feet are planted, but the rest of him seems to wish they weren't. "I mean every day. You look nice, but especially . . ." His hands flutter up out of his pockets in some kind of aborted gesture she doesn't understand. "You look especially nice today."

He isn't mumbling. He's the very opposite of mumbling, in fact, and the sidelong glances they're getting from passersby tell her she's not alone in finding this a little weird. Compliments half-shouted across an expanse of sidewalk. It's weird in general. It's weird for them. Lately and not so lately.

But it's not an afterthought. He gives her one last, slightly miserable look so she knows it's not, and then he's gone. He's disappearing down the subway stairs at speed, and she's sorry to see him go. She's suddenly sorry she didn't say a thing.

Her stomach flutters pleasantly, and one hand rises to touch the bun she'd made an effort with today. A braid and a long rest after all that took out of her. A dozen little pins and another rest, her scars pulling and burning all the while.

But she made the effort and he noticed. She's sure of that. Sure of what he meant, and she wants badly to call him back.

"Thanks," she says faintly, because he's long gone. He's not there to hear or to see the pleased blush rising on her cheeks. "Thanks, Castle."

* * *

 

 

She puts her hair up again the next morning. She frets over it, worrying that it's too severe after all that. She scowls at herself, freeing a few strands around her face with shaking fingers to soften things. It's an effort to not second guess and take it all down so she can hide. She'd really like to hide, but she thinks of him. The bravery of that stand in the middle of the sidewalk.

_You look nice . . ._

_. . . especially._

She struggles into a new jacket. It's close-fitting. An impulse buy. An aspiration that's found its way into her closet just lately, and she doesn't hate it. She doesn't hate how it skims the sides of her body, or the angle of the stand-up collar running parallel to her jaw. She fastens the burnished-silver buttons and smoothes the hem over her hips, in silent conversation with the pale, thin wraith in the mirror. For the first time in months, she faces herself and doesn't quite hate it.

 

* * *

 

He's already there when she gets to the precinct. He's in motion. She hangs back a moment and takes it in. The rightness of him here—the household spirit of her desk. The rightness of him, rushing to the board and ebbing away to take in the whole of it. Focused in that manic way of his that fits perfectly with her own methodical approach.

He has a board of his own—the flip side of hers, appropriately enough—and it's filled already. It's absolutely filled with his neat, slanting caps. A story he's been spinning nearly all night from the look of things.

"Did you get any sleep?"

The question is out before she can think better of it. Before the easy intimacy of the words can bring a blush to her cheeks. That follows soon enough, though. He turns, all the manic energy draining out of him in an instant. Transforming. A sudden flare of heat as his eyes sweep over her, head to toe.

"Not a wink," he says, breathless, because she does that to him. She takes his breath away.

* * *

 

 

Things fall into place between them. He's amped up by the possibility of ghosts. Tugged by the current of story stretching back and back. Twenty years. A hundred. She teases him, a little rough. He pushes back, bolder with her than he's been. He lets his mind wander and his mouth run like he hasn't in months, and it's like this tight, tentative way they've been with each other is breaking down. For her, it's like a long, languid stretch that pops her spine back into alignment.

It's not as pleasant a thought as it should be. It has her counting up the awkward pauses and missing rituals. It has her noticing how out of joint and off kilter they've been all this while. It has her worrying how fragile a thing this is. How delicate a balance they're trying to strike between all the old, familiar things and every possibility. All that has been and is now and might be.

It's hard to enjoy it. Progress and precious things they've come so close to losing. It's hard _not_ to feel grateful and terrified and hopeful. It's hard to feel like this. A work in progress inside a work in progress, but that's what she is. That's what _they_ are, and it's so much better than three lonely, awful months. It's so much better than the alternative.

* * *

 

 

"Has it always been like this?" She reaches her fingertips toward the window, fascinated at first by the odd sensation of approach. Reminded of the one-way mirror in the box and all the secrets it gives up, every time.

"This isn't your usual slot." Burke lays no particular emphasis on the words, but like everything else out of his mouth, it's a prompt. A nudge in the direction she's supposed to be going.

"Things are good," she says and knows it's defensive. She sees it in the rigid line her arm becomes. The right angle of it against the easy, familiar curve of the chair. She sees it in the reflection that might have been there all the while.

"For you?"

"For me." She sits up straighter and pushes away a fleeting wish that she'd left the jacket on. A fleeting desire for its sleek fit and upright collar. "For the two of us."

Burke just nods. He lets the silence do its work.

"He said . . . he told me I looked nice." She turns again to the window, as much away from Burke to hide the blush as to see herself. To see if it still feels true.

"And that's new?" The words sound skeptical, though that's more likely to be in her head than anything.

"It's different." She turns back to the room. To herself, here and now.

"Troubling?" He spreads his hands, heading her off before she has a chance to bristle at the word. "You say things are good."

"They are. Easier than they've been . . ."

"Since your shooting," he finishes when it's obvious that she's not going to. That she can't for some reason.

"In a while."

She's still as she says it. Preoccupied by something missing. Something she waits for that doesn't come. Her face tips toward her lap, defeated. She feels like she's lost it. Some important thread that was dangling before her just a moment ago.

"And easier is good."

That's _definitely_ skeptical. In and out of her head.

"Of course it is," she snaps. "Why wouldn't it be?"

"You don't sound convinced. I'm just . . ." He lets a sly smile slip. The merest flick of his hand toward the window. "Reflecting."

She laughs. It's tight and high up in her chest. It's worried, but she tugs and things come loose. Looser, anyway, like she has hold of one end of it.

"I don't trust . . ." She shakes her head at herself. At the image in the window with its smoothed-back bun and soft, pretty wisps of hair falling on either side of a frown. "It feels . . . cosmetic. Like nothing is really fixed." She reaches all the way out this time. Fingertip to fingertip with herself. The cool glass soothes the burn on her thumb where the coffee maker scalded her. An instant of relief before he smudges on glass make her blush. Before they leave her furiously scrubbing with her sleeve. Muttering almost to herself. "He's mad. He hasn't . . . he said he'd call."

"Where is he now?"

"Castle? Chasing ghosts." She smirks, playing it off, but the question startles her. It feels entirely out of left field. "He's with Ryan." Except not entirely out of left field, apparently. The words keep tumbling from her mouth. "That's not . . . I didn't reschedule because . . . ." She falls silent. She looks at her hands where they've dropped, completely still in her lap. "It can't be easy, right? It _shouldn't_ be easy."

"I doubt it will be easy in the long run, Kate." There's another sly smile. Two in one session, and it's some kind of record. "If that makes you feel any better."

"It does." She drops her head hard against the low back of the chair. Her scar sends a burning twinge up and out and the high, tight thing in her chest loosens a little more. "It feels like it should hurt."

She dips her chin and rolls her head to her shoulder. She frowns at herself in the window and there's a sudden, sweet, sore flash of memory. A tiny version of her trying to kiss her mother in the mirror, her face screwing up with frustration as she came crashing down on her own lips time and time again. Her mother, trying not laugh, tugging her back from the glass and raining kisses on her skin. Real kisses on her real skin.

"It most likely will," Burke says quietly, as if he's been waiting. As if he knows the moment she pushes the memory away and he knows why. "You care for each other." She feels his gaze on her. The weight of the words he's chosen carefully, like she might spook. Like she might run all over again. "There's work to be done, Kate. Separately and together. And it will be difficult sometimes, but not always."

"Not always," she echoes him, unhappy with the inversion. His word— _their_ word—undone like it's supposed to be a good thing.

_Not always._

 

* * *

 

 

He comes to her door and it feels like something brand new. With his eyes on her and riotous twist of the braid over her shoulder. She feels loose and undone. Caught out a little, but playful. It's nothing like the last terrible times they've stood facing each other across this space. It's easy and she tries to let it be.

_I don't want to say it, Castle._

She trips on that. She feels her eyes fly wide as she lifts them helplessly to his. They're wide, too. Just for an instant, they're wide and shocked and wounded on the keen edge of memory. But they're laughing, too. They're bright and hopeful.

_For me. Please_.

There's a hint of challenge in it. A hard and soft _you-owe-me_ thrust to it that shocks a smile right on to her face. That lights her up with sudden insight. There's work to be done, and they're doing it. Separately and together. It shocks her right into motion, brushing by him and getting under way.

_I ain't afraid of no ghosts._

* * *

 

 

He calls the night they close the case. The night they leave the precinct, needling each other. Easy in one another's company enough for that, though too many things hang heavy in the air.

He calls, and she's . . . expecting it? That's not quite right, but her voice is level when she picks up.

"Hey, Castle."

_"Hey."_ He sounds like he _wasn't_ expecting it. Like maybe he thought she wouldn't pick up or he's been playing the kind of games she does some times. Fingertips on the small screen. _Call–End Call_ mostly simultaneously. _"I . . . not too late?"_

"No," she says quickly. But she's surprised when she looks at her wrist. She hasn't been doing much of anything and she's not sure how the hours have slipped away. "Not too late." The line goes quiet. Everything goes quiet enough that she pulls the phone away from her ear, afraid she's somehow dropped the call. "Everything . . . ok?"

It sounds feeble. Lame and weak and wavering, even to her own ear. He laughs, though, like it's a pleasant surprise somehow. It is, she realizes. _Her_ asking _him_ is a surprise, and that burns any other words she might have had right up.

_"Thats my line,"_ he says when the moment goes on too long. When it's just too awkward. _"Everything ok?"_

"With me?" She feels stilted. Stupid. She wasn't quiet expecting him to call, but she was. She has been, ever since Serena and the stairwell.

_Even if it's the middle of the night?_

_Even if._

Ever since he promised, she's been expecting it, but here they are.

_"With you."_

He says it like it's obvious, but she hears the caution in his voice. It reminds her strangely of Burke. An irritating flash. _You care for each other._ She's about to lash out. _Why wouldn't it be_. The words are coiling, a sharp metal tang, but he speaks again.

_"I just wanted to check . . ."_ He sounds a little frazzled. Like he's expecting her to jump in, but she's baffled. This isn't what she wasn't quite expecting. " _The case,"_ he says quietly, like that it explains it. It doesn't, though. It doesn't explain anything. _"It had to bring things up for you."_

She goes white and blank. Another shock and not nice this time. Not giddy and terrifying and playful in her hallway. Memory calls up Pete Benton's words.

_When something like that happens, it's burned into your brain. Every detail . . . I couldn't forget it if I tried._

It calls up the half-shared look between them. Her guilt and something searching in him. Wounded and wondering and determined. Something new and old and she's not ready for this. She's not _ready._

"Castle . . ."

It's a choked whisper. Airless enough that he must not hear it. He must not hear it, because he's talking again. He's _talking_ , calm and careful and not at all like he knows her for a liar and a coward.

_" . . . turning out to be a dirty cop like that. It must be . . ."_

He trails off, and the silence helps, uncomfortable as it is. She picks up pieces and puts them together a new way. She hears words that jerked out of her when the lights blazed and she found herself facing Smith. The cold, mechanical sound of her voice as she laid out a story, too familiar in the details, now that she thinks of it that way. The way he'd assumed she would.

"I'm fine," she blurts, stepping on him. On something he was about to say that sounds like a prelude to hanging up. "Castle, I'm . . . it really hadn't . . . Smith. It makes me sick. Of course it does. But I hadn't . . ." There's another twist in the high and tight thing she's been carrying in her chest these last few days. Not her scar, but something in the neighborhood. "I wasn't really thinking about Raglan." She grits her teeth. The round-about name has her angry with herself. Flaring out in all directions. "I wasn't thinking about my mom."

_"Oh."_ He sounds miserable. It makes her think strangely of the other night. The way he twisted in place and still held his ground, calling out to her. _"Well. I guess I took care of that. Sorry. Beckett, I'm . . ."_

"Castle, it's not . . ." She pushes up from the couch. She paces, wishing he was there again. Wishing he could see and know and wishing this weren't so hard. "I'm . . . not always thinking about it."

_"Aren't you?"_

The words lash out of him, sudden enough that she thinks they're a surprise to him, too. They're flat and disbelieving. Colder and angrier than anything since the swing set, and there's something a little sick in the way it settles her. There's nothing easy in this moment, and yet she feels better for it. She finds stillness and focus and something to curl her fingers hard into.

"How are you, Castle?" Her words are quiet. She leans a little into _you_ , but keeps it level.

_"Me?"_ He's trying to recover. Forcing good humor into the single syllable. Into the question mark, but it's just that. _Forced_.

"It's the middle of the night." She drops back to the couch. She pulls her knees up and in, reaching for a nearby blanket and letting her hand fall away without it. "You called."

She waits out the silence and feels like the hardest thing she's done. Harder than sending him away. Harder than not calling out for him before he'd even made the door. Harder than drawing every bit of bravery around her to set a book before him with trembling hands.

_"The files_ ," he says finally. Flat and cold, still, but guarded. Hurt, and that settles her, too. She pushes the thought away. There's plenty of time to work on her. They're working on them right now. Working on him, and she's hanging on the words that come, slow and far away. _"The money trail to Coonan. You knew . . . Would you have . . ."_ She hears him swallow. She pictures his fists opening and closing. The white, frigid calm he calls up sometimes. Fury. _"Would you have come back? Would we even be having this conversation if I hadn't had those files?"_

She feels her nails biting into her palms. Her teeth closing hard and the eternal casualty of her lip. She feels some part of herself rising up. Burning and raining down destruction. Going, though. _Going,_ because there's a calm, miserable part of herself that knows how to do this. That worries when things are easy and settles when everything hurts. There's a calm, miserable part of her that tells the truth.

"I don't know how to answer that."

_"You don't know."_

There's nothing in it. It's rote repetition without the faintest indication of how it must feel. She drops her forehead to her knees and knows it must muddle her words. It must make this as literally hard to hear as it has to be figuratively.

"I don't, Castle. I don't know how to answer . . . in the last twelve . . . I don't know how to answer _any_ question like that. What I would have done or I wouldn't have done without my mom . . . if she hadn't . . ."

_"Okay. Okay. Beckett. We don't have to . . ."_

She hears the words from him. Overlapping and repetitious. Trying to soothe her, and it's not the kind of pain that feels right or familiar, even to her. Even as messed up as she is.

"We _do_ have to," she yells— _hollers_ —and she thinks of her tiny self, furious at the reflection of things. Furious at all she could never reach through the glass. "We have to . . ."

_"At some point,"_ he snaps. _"Yeah, Kate. At some point, we have to."_ It shuts her up. The sharp bite of the words lancing through her and strange release following. Like something has been festering, and she supposes that's the case. _"But right now . . ."_ She hears him swallow hard. _"I don't think either of us can do it right now."_

"Either of us," she echoes, in and out of her head, like she'll need the words later. She will. There's work to be done.

_"I needed to ask."_ It's not quite defensive. Not quite conciliatory, either. _"But I don't . . .right now, I just needed to ask."_

He lets it hang there. They both leave it hanging, and there's that difference again. A thing decided between them for once. No phone or Ryan or Esposito or _I was thinking trailing_ off into the ether. It's a thing they set aside with the best of intentions, however hard this is now.

"Did it help any?"

She wonders if it's a joke. She wonders what it is at all, but he surprises her. He breathes out. A shaky huff of laughter down the line.

_"It helped."_ She hears a smile in it. A tired one, but he's telling the truth. _"I should go. Middle of the night,"_ he adds, and there's a smile in that, too.

"Ok," she says, but it isn't quite. She waits for the familiar words, but they don't to come.

_"Ok,"_ he says, but it definitely isn't.

She hears movement. The phone sliding over his skin as if he's hanging up. As if they're leaving it like this.

"I missed you, Castle," she blurts it out. Panicked and clumsy. "I don't know if I would have . . . but I missed you"

_"You missed me."_

His voice is far from steady. There's a waver that knits the words together, and she can't tell if it's anger or longing or disbelief. She can't tell if it's something else entirely.

"The whole time," she forces herself to say it. That and only that. She forces herself to bite back everything else there's time for later. "I missed you the whole time."

_"Thank you,"_ he says quietly, just when she's sure he'll never say anything at all. " _That . . . helps, too. It helps,"_ he says again, like it's not quite true. Like he doesn't quite believe it yet, and how could he?

"Good," she says when she thinks her voice might be steady. It isn't quite. "Night, Castle."

She adds it quickly, her own familiar words racing out as she jerks the phone from her ear and jams her thumb down hard on the red button. She forces herself up and into motion. She strips off her clothes, tired and sore to her bones all of a sudden. She drops the phone on the bedside table and goes numbly through her night time routine.

She drags herself from bathroom to bed, barely upright enough to claw back the covers and curl herself beneath. She swears she won't look. She swears she's absolutely not _touching_ the phone until morning. But it's in her hand. Her finger is on the button and it's there waiting. A bright blue balloon and familiar words.

_Until tomorrow, Detective._

ry.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thanks for reading this fits-and-starts sto


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It's like that now. Every time her phone rings and it's him, it's like he's throwing the door of her life wide and striding right in. It's exactly like that when he calls that morning, and she can barely even push a hint of feigned annoyance past the wide smile."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Inching forward again, this is set during Cops & Robbers (4 x 07) and Heartbreak Hotel (4 x 08)

 

In utter loneliness a writer

tries to explain the inexplicable.

— John Steinbeck

* * *

 

He's been calling lately. Not _Even If It's The Middle of the Night_ calling. He hasn't done that— _they_ haven't done that—since he asked and she had no good answer.

_Would you have come back? If I hadn't had those files . . ._

_I don't know how to answer that._

And she doesn't, and this is _hard_ , and he's still mad.

But it helped anyway. He said so, and he's tight-fisted with kind lies when it comes to this. It helped, her blurting out something obvious and not obvious. To her and to him, respectively.

_I missed you. The whole time._

She wishes she could have seen his face right then. She wishes, even though she's not sure she could have borne the surprise. That's how bad it is. He's _surprised_ that she missed him, when it seems so obvious to her that she blushes sometimes. She blushes and looks over her shoulder to see who might be around. Who might be looking on while all this _feeling_ pours out of her. She blushes, he's surprised, and that's how big a mess this all is.

But he wants to believe her. He wants to trust what _has_ to be obvious, and she thinks maybe he does now.

_That . . . helps, too. It helps._

She thinks maybe he's done saying it out loud, over and over, and that might mean he believes. Because he calls. All the time, now.

He calls when he's bored. When he's struck by some bizarre wondering—about superpowers or or the physics of light inside a completely mirrored ball or whether it's true that lack of oxygen to the brain is really, _ultimately_ the only cause of death—and he has to share. He calls when he's supposed to be writing and he wants her help playing hooky.

He calls, and it's a demand, and that feels like progress. Not that he's not mad. He is. But he's holding her accountable, too, and it feels like there's something on the far side of his anger. Eventually it feels like that.

At first it feels like he's checking up on her. Calling to be sure she hasn't run off again. Calling because she never did.

_Three months._

It feels like penance next. The wariness of a child who fights sleep, certain that she'll creep in and snap off the promised all-night light the instant his eyes close. It feels like he's calling to _make_ her pick up, and if it's penance, she's good for it. She's more than willing, but for a while now, what it really feels like is a demand.

There's a kind of cockiness to it that makes her think of early days. The way he took up space in her life from that first moment. Stepping too close, his pen raised and ready. Elbows on the table in interrogation. The chair he dragged next to her desk and the way he stretched his long legs out and steepled his fingers on his chest with a look that said he wasn't going anywhere.

The way he kept on doing it. Pushing, day after day and week after week, even after the first time she banished him. It makes her think of him striding around her apartment, _touching_ things as if she wanted him there. As if she'd invited him up to see her etchings.

It's like that now. Every time her phone rings and it's him, it's like he's throwing the door of her life wide and striding right in. It's exactly like that when he calls that morning, and she can barely even push a hint of feigned annoyance past the wide smile.

_Castle, what do you want?_

_Tell me you need me._

* * *

 

She'll tell him everything. _Everything._ If they just get out of this nightmare alive, she will open herself—heart and arms and _mouth_ —and she will tell him everything.

It's the vow she makes to God or the Universe or Superman. Who or whatever's listening. It's the mantra that rings out all through her, racing along the inside of her ribs. Her skull. It's endless repetition that travels through every last tendril of vein. It's the promise that leaps from her skin to his as they crouch over a stranger. As she folds her fingers around his wide palm and begs.

_Just keep breathing._

It's a blur after that. A fast-moving horror show and it's not. It's unthinkable, drawn-out moments. The van rocking beneath her feet. The bright autumn sun dimmed by clouds tangling around her, only they're not clouds at all. It's smoke. Debris. Remains. Things that once were and have ceased to be in an instant, raining down on her shoulders.

There's only one word that will come, then.

_Castle!_

* * *

 

There's a moment when she makes good. She sets her gun down beside his feet and takes his hands in hers, and the symbolism isn't lost on either of them.

There's a moment, and it fills up with everything. It's hardly between the lines at all.

_Here we go. Are you ready?_

It spills out of her. It washes over him. Everything. It's _everything_ and he lifts his eyebrows, too afraid to believe. It's a question. An answer, and her fingers curling around his lapel as she leans in.

It's everything in a single moment, but the vow slips away. His mother. The job. Life and fear and all the broken parts of her invade. Not all at once. Not for good, she tells herself, because there's joy, too. There's rest and nourishment and Martha's arms around her. He's by her side, and she's at his, and they feel as close to _them_ and _always_ as they ever have.

Still, the vow slips away.

* * *

 

"What's 'everything'?"

Kate's eyes narrow. She presses her lips together and won't look at him. It's literal. Burke isn't prone to zen koans and rhetorical questions. Or maybe he just knows she isn't.

"Self-explanatory, isn't it?" She picks at a seam where flat, cool leather comes together on the arm of the chair. She sounds sullen and doesn't care. She's disgusted with herself. With this whole, useless exercise.

"I'm not sure it is," he says. "I'm not sure you've explained it to yourself."

"Everything." She draws out the syllables. "All of it."

"Three months is a long time." He's needling her a little. Talking to her like she's a child, and though it's no more than she's just done to him, retaliation isn't his style either. This is something else. She hates something else. "Have you thought about where you'll start?"

It floods her, then. Panic. Fear. Humiliation. Strange hands on her and _pain._ Foul-smelling, oozing bandages and hideous flaking, puckered skin. Powerlessness and the black, black anger that comes with all of it. Being a victim of her own body. Of evil men, and a man she _trusted_. Her, with her hard, wounded heart. She'd _trusted_ Montgomery.

"The cemetery," she says, but she's grasping. She's throwing up blocks, because it's flooding her, and the cemetery isn't where _everything_ starts at all.

"His confession." Burke nods. He makes a note on his pad.

"Confession." There's a hiss to it. Venom she's not at all prepared for, though Burke doesn't seem surprised in the least. "It's not a sin."

"It's not." He says it firmly like he hasn't just agreed with he. Like at least on of them is arguing. "Do you believe that?"

"That it's not . . ." She looks at him, full on now. Startled. "What?"

He laughs at himself, like he's surprised the trick works. A non sequitur, like another needle pricking her skin. A distraction that pulls her out of the flood of too much.

"Exactly. 'What'?" he repeats. "It comes down to that, Kate. You'd start with him telling you he loves you?"

The word jolts her in the chair. It makes her clumsy limbs into poor shelter for the center of her body. For heart and scars and everything.

"Do you believe that?" Burke asks again.

"That he . . ." The word won't come. "That he should? Or still does? Or just thought he did . . ."

"Any or all," he says affably. "They're good questions."

"I was dying." She turns her palm over. Lays the back of her other hand in it. A sketch in the air. "Right there in front of him."

"He was dying," Burke says cooly. "In the bank. You thought he had. What went through your mind in that moment?"

_Everything,_ she thinks, but she doesn't answer.

He leaves her to her silence longer than usual. Longer than he has since the early days of crossed arms and monosyllables. He leaves her like that a while, and he's gentler than she deserves when he goes on.

"Honesty is an art, Kate. It's not just turning out your pockets, emotionally speaking. It's a daily practice in a relationships." He pauses and it's more like hesitation than she's used to seeing from him. "Ones we mean to last, anyway."

"You don't think I should tell him?" She wants it to sound like a challenge. Something sullen again. Petulant, because she's more comfortable with that today than anything else.

"I think you should know _what_ you intend to tell him." He shakes his head, and she has the uncomfortable feeling she fascinates him. "And why."

"You think — " She laughs. An echo of his earlier sound. She presses the heels of her hands to her eyes and hates this. How _hard_ it is to unravel the habits of her whole adult life. " — you think I should get my story straight."

"He's a writer." He draws the top sheet over his pad. The blank he always keeps there for privacy. Or maybe for the illusion that it's a clean slate every time. "I think it's a good start."

* * *

 

She works on it. A fresh notebook bound in soft leather with rough-edged, unlined pages. An impulse buy. Expensive, and it makes her feel stupid exactly one second after she leaves the store with it. She pushes it from her, burning with it and unable to start, even on scratch paper set carefully beside it. Even when she feels awash in everything she wants to say. Even when she's desperate.

There's no beginning to this—no end to grab that would help her slip this terrible knot—and he's ebbing away from her. Not far, but definite. He's louder and more careful at once. He laughs and plays up, and it makes her remember the stairwell. It makes her remember that he's not just angry. He's afraid _not_ to be angry. He's afraid of exactly this. False starts and vows that slip away. He's afraid that any day now, she'll run again.

So he runs first. Off with the boys to Atlantic City. It's not fair to look at it like that. She knows it's not fair at all, but it feels that way, even in the end. When she's the one to leave the three of them there. When she's the one to head home and tie up loose ends while they salvage a bachelor party from the wreckage.

It's a sore thing anyway. The no-girls-allowed code when she's been stranded all day with Gates kicking at the one solid, anchored thing in her life—the certainty that, at least as far as the job goes, they are _good_ together. All of that on top of the uneasy feeling that he's the one running.

It's a sore thing, and fair or not, she feels well and truly sorry for herself. She's headed out for the night when the phone rings. She's sure at first it's not the real thing. That she's imagined it, and then, when the musical run starts again, that it must be a butt dial or something. Impromptu bachelor party, right? There's no reason in the world he'd be calling. No _good_ reason.

She hits green, half afraid of what she'll hear. It's quiet, though. It's a hotel-room-all-battened-down of quiet and she wonders fleetingly how she knows.

"Castle?"

_"It's not the middle of the night,"_ he says sullenly.

She laughs, startled and pleased and _relieved._ He's . . . cranky. Not in trouble or furious or upset. Cranky. She steals a glance at her watch. "It's _not_ the middle of the night. Everything ok?"

_"Does everything_ sound _ok, Beckett?"_

She hears the rush of skin over the speaker them the empty hollow of a room, silent enough they she hears his breath at a distance. It's a strange counterpoint the echoes of her own footfalls on concrete.

"Sounds quiet," she offers when the theater of it goes on too long.

_"Quiet."_ He bites the _T_ right off. _"Pin-droppingly quiet at 10:45 in Atlantic City, because Ryan is a happy drunk on half a daiquiri and he wandered off to call Jenny, and Esposito, with an off-duty dancer in his lap—voluntarily in his lap with hardly any coaxing at all—starts in about Lanie . . ."_

"He didn't!" She slides behind the wheel and pulls the car door shut, grinning now, as the dome light fades. Not sore at all.

_"He did. I couldn't watch."_

His voice goes up and down in volume, like he's shifting restlessly. Running his hands over his face.

"And you?" she asks. She keeps it light for now, following his lead, but there's something underneath the bravado. A different kind of demand and she wants to meet it. "How's your half-daiquiri treating you?"

_"No daiquiri."_ He manages to sound affronted. _"Something on fire that's apparently one of those go-directly-to-hangover things."_

"Do not pass drunk, do not collect $200?"

_"You're laughing at me._ " She can hear him trying to scowl. She can picture it exactly.

"Not laughing," she says, but she is. She's hardly bothering to hide it. "I'm here for you, Castle."

_"But you're_ not," he shoots back. _"You're_ there, _and everything is stupid."_

The words rush out of him. They stop everything dead, and the moment _can't_ be as long as it feels. The silence can't be as loud as it seems to her.

_"But . . ."_ He pauses to pull himself together, and she can picture _that_ exactly, too. It's all too familiar. _"It's not the middle of the night."_

Her eyes close at the softness of his voice. The fond, wounded patience of it, and she wonders how they're still standing. The two of them and all their sins against one another.

"It can be," she says, and she hopes she sounds braver than she feels. "It can be the middle of the night if you . . . If you want."

There's another silence, deafening and eternal.

_"I missed you, too."_ It's an offering he's not sure about. Not satisfied with. A breath scours the phone speaker. Loud. A sigh. _"I guess that's . . . Obvious. Stupid."_

"No. Not stupid. No." She trips over her words. Blushes hard in the buzzing parking lot light. It feels terrible all of a sudden. Her here and him there. Hours away. Another too-familiar thing. "Not obvious."

_"It's . . . not?"_

It's a curious thing, those two words. Curious all the different things caught in the space between. How they're flat and resigned, but rising at the end. How they're a reminder to him. A question for her.

"Not obvious," she says again and wishes she'd listened to Burke. She wishes she knew how even to start this. "You were mad." Small. That's how it starts. An offering she's no more satisfied with than he was a minute ago. "Are mad. I know that. I know."

She wants his hands, suddenly and sharply. She remembers how they felt in hers, palms curved around them. Four hands together like a prayer answered at last. But she's here and he's there and everything is stupid.

"That day. At the signing." She falters, the memory of the flat, cold look he gave her still sharp and stinging, even months on. "It didn't seem like you could . . ."

_"Be that mad and miss you at the same time?"_ There's humor in it. Warmth, but the anger is keener for it. _"You were. Are?"_ He pauses, but it's really a question for himself. _"When you left you were . . . but you missed me."_

"I did." She's fierce about it. Unhesitating. "Whatever else . . ." She pushes the rest aside. Whether she was angry. Whether she is still or if it's why she left. That's all part of _everything_ and she needs her story straight. For now, she latches on to what's true and uncomplicated. "I _missed_ you, Castle."

There's a pulsing, quiet moment. Restful for them both, and she knows he believes this at least. She missed him, and he's led her to something along the way. An answer to believes it's possible.

_"I'm not good at lonely,"_ he says after another long while, as careful with himself as he is with her.

It makes her catch her breath. More the way he says it than the sense of the words. She doesn't have that at first. She doesn't have that at all, but the way he says it, like the first look at a fresh, open wound.

_"I've fixed my life for a while now so I'm not. I can't be."_ There's pause a gathering of thoughts and what comes next has the stamp of repetition. Something he's told himself in the dark of a hundred nights. _"I have Alexis. And my mother and they're all I've let myself . . ._ need . . ."

The hesitation that brackets the word makes her heart pound. They've wandered far too close to what it is each of them knows or doesn't know. What either of them believes.

"Need," she says faintly, and she's not sure he hears it. She's not sure she wants him to.

_"And then you were gone."_

She hears the groan of bedsprings, cruel in context. She hears feet on the floor and the hiss of curtains on runners. She hears something like knuckles on glass and turns her face to her own car window as if looking south, she might see him with eyes turned up to the same night sky.

" _I sent my mother and Alexis out of the city. They were furious."_

It's matter of fact enough. Not quite emotionless, because that's not in him, but it's information, not accusation. Still, her stomach clenches to hear it. She's sick with realization and fury that she's just now thinking of it. But of course he'd have sent them away. Working the case all summer with no leads. No way to know who might be a target. Of course he would have.

"Castle." She covers her eyes with her hand like darkness now can make up for then.

_"You were gone,"_ he says again. _"Everybody was gone."_

The addition of that costs him even more. She hears the faint buzz of glass as if he's cooling his skin against the clear expanse and it vibrates with the effort of this. She thinks of Montgomery. That's his loss, too. Betrayal a alterable thing asked of him. She thinks of her own words.

_This immediate family._

It tastes more like blackmail than anything from this vantage point. A demand for loyalty and so little in return. She's weighted down with it. Packed tight with regret that's inclined to tie her tongue. She fights against it, though. She opens her mouth, and a lesson from him tumbles out.

"I'm sorry." A start as simple as that. "I'm sorry I left you like that." She wants to tell him she didn't know. That she had no idea how truly alone he'd been, but it's so beside the point. For now, she sticks to the straight and narrow. "I . . . I'm not good at lonely anymore, either."

_"You're not?"_

The way he says it reminds her of last time. Repetition to hold on to it. Something that seems so obviously untrue. Something he wants to believe anyway.

_"You're not,"_ he says again and she's nodding eagerly, as though he can see.

"I thought I still was." She thinks of Josh. Of her father, and her fingers itch suddenly for pen and paper. Parts of the story that she'll need. She'll need them. "I always have been . . ."

_"Not always,"_ he cuts in, insistent. Her defender. Always. _"Since . . ."_

"Since," she agrees for the sake of peace, here and now, though she's not sure it's so simple. "But I'm not good at it anymore." She takes a breath. Another step that scares her enough that her hands glide busily over the steering wheel and find the key in the ignition. But she keeps breathing. "I don't want to be good at it anymore."

Her blood pounds loud enough in her ears that she worries she's missed anything he's said. More worried he hasn't said anything at all. That he won't because it's not enough. But his voice comes, quiet and clear after a while. Quiet and clear.

_"Good. Me neither."_

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thanks again for those patient enough to keep reading and encouraging me in this story.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The story comes to her in third person. When it comes to her at all, that is. It's still slow going. Still strange to find the page blank and wide when she sits down, determined to work at it. Strange to register the itch in the tips of her fingers and find the words are suddenly there when she's just decided it's impossible"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: This is an interstitial set after Heartbreak Hotel (4 x 08) and before Kill Shot (4 x 09).

* * *

 

 

It takes a long time to become young.

— Pablo Picasso

* * *

 

The story comes to her in third person. When it comes to her at all, that is. It's still slow going. Still strange to find the page blank and wide when she sits down, determined to work at it. Strange to register the itch in the tips of her fingers and find the words are suddenly there when she's just decided it's impossible.

Or when she's not thinking about it at all. When she's thinking about him instead. Going endlessly over things he's said and she's said. Wondering if things are really getting easier— _better_ —or if it's just wishful thinking.

It comes in fits and starts, but the weight of the pen in her hand is already familiar. And she's shy with herself when she realizes she likes the drag of it over thick, rough paper. That she feels a swell of pride when she sees that the soft leather edge already bears a mark where the heel of her hand comes to rest when she sits down to it.

Everything about it is strange.

Third person, for one thing. Where it starts for another. With Josh of all places. She wasn't expecting that. Work to do behind a door she's thought of as so firmly closed for so long.

She's impatient with it. Impatient with the crush of physical details packed in around the heart of every painful moment. As if flowers and a brick-wall view and the hiss of a door hinge matter. But she stalls when she fights it. She undoes the itch in the tips of her fingers. She wastes that momentum by struggling, and the scar burns.

Eventually she surrenders. Accepts that scent and sound and the little she could see through the slit of her eyelids—from her hospital bed, from the sagging couch in her dad's cabin—are part of memory. Part of this work, and the particulars of the story flow out of her. Directly from the sharp tug in her chest, down her arm, and out in ink.

Burke thinks it's a good start. She rests the journal on her thigh now when she sits in that familiar chair. She rests a palm over the soft leather that knows her fingers, in motion and at rest.

He never asks to see the words themselves. He never asks where she is in the story or what parts of _everything_ she's tamed between those covers. What parts still loom, dark and terrifying along this path.

She thinks it's a good start, too, and Burke smiles when she works up the courage to ask about point of view. To ask if it _is_ strange.

"I've tried." She scowls down at the journal, then chafes the corner with her thumb in fond apology. "But it comes out . . . bullet points."

"When you write in first person," he supplies, keeping the door open.

She nods. "It gets . . ." She stops herself. Feels a strange swell of shame, like she's blaming ink and paper. " _I_ get defensive."

"If it's more productive for you to detail what happened in third person . . . "

"What's _happening._ " She interrupts him. Something she never does. Almost never, anyway, but it's a realization. She flips a few pages in and scans her own slanting hand. Her eyes go wide to find it's true. "I write like it's happening _now._ To someone else." She slaps the cover closed and presses her fists to the leather. Hiding now, not resting. "But that's wrong, isn't it?"

He hesitates. It's alarming, but he holds up a palm like he knows she's hip deep in a worst-case scenario already. "Present tense is . . . standard in many schools of therapy."

"Abreaction." That's dredged up from somewhere. Psych 101 or Freud as Literature. Somewhere, and Burke looks relieved that it's popped out of her mouth not his. It's been a while, but early on, she'd dug her heels in about jargon.

"The present tense can impart a sense of control." He moves on from that before she even has a chance to bristle. They both know her control issues have control issues, but there's a different point entirely he's leading to. "And it can strip away the illusion of it. That immediacy can help us to see that the freedom to act in moments of crisis is more limited than guilt or regret would have us believe."

She nods again, feeling like a toy on a string, but it makes a kind of sense. She calls up the distant feeling of her hand moving across the page. The way it frees her from rote facts and clears the way for some kernel of truth. The satisfaction that comes with closing the cover on those moments, knowing she's been honest.

"Catharsis," she says, finally.

"If you prefer." He's not smiling as he says it. He's not smiling so hard it's practically a chuckle, but there's a spark in the glance that lands on the right angles of it in her lap. "Your third-person narrator . . . omniscient?"

She thinks about it. Gives him a shame-faced grin and sweeps an apologetic finger down the journal's spine. "Unreliable."

He does smile then. Full on. "Sounds about right."

"For me?" She smiles back, gratified. Proud, and hating herself a little for how _reassuring_ this all is.

"For everyone."

* * *

 

The words come more easily in the real world, too. Not just on the page or the soft-lit confines Burke's office. She feels herself fall into the rhythms of conversation. All kinds of conversation. With him—with Castle in the middle of the night and not—but not _just_ him. With Lanie and Ryan and Esposito. With families and witnesses. She feels _good_ at this again. Or like she can be again. Someday.

She jokes and snaps and rolls her eyes, and it's less like a role imperfectly rehearsed. There's no recoil every time anything hits her too hard. Joy and fear and annoyance and anger—they come and go and she feels less like a bell sounding a sour note.

It's easier to walk in the world. Most of the time, it's easier.

She's at the precinct late one night. Not a case, though they'd closed one well after banker's hours. She's been heading out for a long time, but one little thing after another comes up.

She looks at the clock every now and then, an absent examination of whether this is the job or her wearing the hair-shirt. Seeking absolution for the sin of getting shot and not rolling with the punch. Not striding back in after a long weekend or something equally heroic.

It's another rock turned over in her sessions with Burke. All the ways her work is like a dysfunctional relationship if she allows it to be—a place to hide, an excuse to let life pass her by, a way to punish herself. It's a side bar, really. Back matter, and not the story itself, but she tries to use the clock to keep herself honest, and tonight it seems like the death of a thousand cuts really is just the needful minutiae of the job.

It leaves her snappish when her cell rings. She's literally in the act of pulling her bag from the drawer—really going this time—and if it's one more damned thing between her and a bath, she just might set something on fire.

"Beckett," she raps out, not bothering to check the caller ID.

There's a distinct pause. Hesitance, probably at the sharp edge she's put on her name, but something else, too. Information gathering.

_"Tell me you're not still at the precinct."_ He huffs loudly in her ear. _"You're still at the precinct."_

"How could you possibly know that?" She grins in spite of herself. She leans hard enough back that her chair squeals in protest.

_"You're sitting. You're never sitting when I call and you're home."_

He's right. She doesn't know how he knows, but he's right.

"And what do I do when you call and I'm home, Castle?"

She throws it out there. A challenge with more than a little flirtation in it. She bites her lip against the giddy feeling that's been a long time falling back into place. _Easier_ , she thinks, one hand pressed to her belly.

_"Well . . ."_ He drags the word out into a drawl. He's playing up, but she hears nerves underneath to match her own. _"You pace sometimes. Like you're tidying up. Or sometimes like you're just nervous."_ He leans into that. A little twist to show he has her number, too. _"Or like you're getting ready for bed."_

His voice drops to an unsteady rumble and she's not sure if it's the mere fact of upping the ante or something more raw. There's a lull. Nothing but breath on the line and then a quick smile she hears even before he speaks.

_"And sometimes you're already in bed and you have mushy pillow voice."_

She laughs out loud at that. Sends it ringing through the almost-empty bullpen. She's still wondering what she sounds like when she's sitting when she hears him shifting. She pictures the nervous gestures and glances at the clock again. It's late to still be at her desk, but far from the middle of the night, and she's curious.

"So you just called to tell me my over-the-phone tells?"

She meets his lightness with her own. She hears a breath of laughter sweep over the speaker, but it's short lived. A little tight sounding.

_"I just . . ."_ More shifting, like he's swapping the phone from ear to ear. Like he's the one pacing. _"No one said anything all day. And maybe that's what you want, so if it is, I'm . . ."_

The lightness is gone, just like that. She doesn't know how she knows, any more than it's obvious what she sounds like sitting, but it's gone, leaving caution in its place. Formality and lingering hurt. Anger they're both still working through.

_"There's only a little left, but I just wanted to say—_ had _to say—happy birthday, Beckett."_

"Birthday." It's mechanical repetition. She feels heavy in her chair. Like it might—like it _must_ —collapse under the sudden weight of realization. "Oh, _God."_

_"Ok. So clearly not saying anything would have been the smart move._ "

He's backpedaling. Apologetic, though not entirely. Hardness and hurt, still. The kind of push at her they both still need practice at.

"No, Castle, I . . ." She presses the heel of her hand to the low-level headache between her eyes. There's a snapping sensation. Moments she's overlooked in the last couple of days assembling themselves. "Can I call you back?"

_"You don't need . . ."_

He rushes to say it. She rushes to break in.

"I want to." It's loud and unequivocal. "I want to, Castle," she says more quietly. "I didn't realize. My dad. He left a couple messages . . . I didn't realize."

_"Call him,"_ he says instantly. _"And if you're still up to talk after . . ."_

"I'll call you." She winces at the words. The unfortunate echo they'll be for a long time to come. He does, too. On the other end of the line, he winces, though she couldn't say how she knows. "I _will,_ Castle."

He accepts it. One painful beat and nothing more. _"I'll be up."_

* * *

 

Nothing comes easily with her dad. Neither end of the conversation, though he's obviously pleased she called. Once he gets past the panic born of the late hour.

_"No, really, Katie. I'm an old man, but my heart can take it._ "

It's the kind of thing that sounds strange from him. He's not the typical jolly dad, making her cheeks burn with the jokes he tells over and over. He never was, and any hale and hearty schtick he might have cultivated has long since been stripped away. Pared down to how very careful they've been with one another for years now.

"I got your messages, I just didn't . . ."

_". . . nothing urgent, like I said. I know you're busy . . ."_

"I forgot." The two words stand alone. They put an end to their overlapping reassurances. Their eagerness to let each other off the hook. "My birthday. I just . . . forgot."

She tries to laugh, but it's leaden. The reality that it's a birthday she might never have seen hangs from it like an anchor. They both fall silent.

_"I know we haven't been big on celebrations these last few years,"_ he says when the quiet is well and truly painful. _"Katie, I hope I haven't given you the idea that I'm not exactly as overjoyed you're my daughter as I was the day you were born."_

"No. Dad. _No_ , that's not it."

And it isn't, really. _He_ hasn't given her the idea, though she'd be lying if she said he wasn't part of it. They both are, this grim consensus that their joys and ambitions and even their sorrows ought to be muted. That everything forever more should be scaled against the tragedy of losing her.

"That's _not_ it," she says again, laughing a little because they're hopeless. Drawing a fingertip under each eye to catch the tears hovering there, because there's time to try. There's still time for that. "I just forgot."

_"I shouldn't have let you forget_ ," he says firmly.

It's stern and stubborn. There's anger in it. Self-directed, because that's who he is. Who he's always been, amplified by recovery. By amends he'll make for the rest of his life. She deserves her share of it, though. Another epiphany in ink. It's part of the story she'd never dreamed of telling, but her hand and her scars have other ideas.

"Make it up to me," she says boldly. "Pizza. Ice cream. A really dumb movie."

"A _movie_ ," he groans. It makes her laugh. Lightness, finally, because he's old school, all out of proportion to his own age. Her mother used to claim he looked down his nose at talkies.

"Just for that, we're seeing _Twilight_."

He laughs, too. In his quiet way, but she knows. He laughs, and it's easier. A little easier.

 

* * *

"You're home now." He picks up before the first ring is finished. He doesn't even say hello. He's smiling. She knows he's smiling.

"Home," she agrees, divesting herself of coat and scarf and keys and gun. "Am I pacing?"

_"Pacing,"_ he says like he's mulling it over, _"but with purpose. You just got in."_

"Creepy, Castle." She shakes her head as she closes the lid of her dresser-top box and shrugs one arm out of her shirt. "Like you're lurking at the win . . .Castle you are _not_ peeking in my window, are you?"

She whips around, staring wildly. Her heart pounds, and it's not entirely fear. It's not entirely horror or indignation or even annoyance when he laughs at her.

_"Not peeking in the window_." An audible pause, thick with hesitation. A gamble he's not sure he should take. _"I did think about coming over, though."_

"An ambush." She feels brave. Meeting the challenge it is head on, even though she's sinking to the foot of the bed, clutching the fabric of her shirt in an awkward bunch across her chest. Hiding the scar, even at this distance. Even when he can't possibly see.

_"A surprise."_ He pushes back. _"It's your birthday after all_."

She looks over her shoulder at the clock. Sad, suddenly. Disappointed in herself. Disappointed he's not on her doorstep. "Not much longer."

_"I can still make it."_ She hears a creak. Chair or mattress, she's not sure. Movement, though. _"I can be at your place with a stale bodega cupcake and at least ten minutes to spare."_

"You'd bring me a stale cupcake?" She falls back on to the bed. Inches her way towards the pillows and welcomes the rise of that giddy feeling again.

_"And a candle,"_ he says eagerly. _"And I'd sing."_

"Sing." She shades her eyes with one hand, grinning up at the ceiling. Suddenly too tired to even finish undressing, let alone pull the chain on the bedside lamp. "Promise or threat?"

_"You like my voice."_

There's swagger in that. Confidence that she thrills to. She _does_ like his voice. She likes . . . she likes _him,_ and it's been an achingly long time since it's seemed like he believes it. She wants him to believe. She wants him to _know_.

"I like your voice, Castle."

It's out there. Absurd in how silly it is. Terrifying in how overt, and she knows it's like that for him, too. She knows.

_"How's your dad?"_

It's the next thing he asks, and she knows without looking that it's already ticked away. The ten minutes to spare. Everything that might have come before. She's regretful. He is, too, but there's a softness to it. A curtain falling for now, rather than a door closing, and this is better in the long run. Talking is probably better.

"Mad at me." The words surprise her. A jolt of honesty that pulls her hand from her eyes and has her wincing at the light. "We're ok, but he's mad at me, too."

She sounds a little petulant. She knows that, but he laughs softly like she gets a pass for being the one to bring it up. To remind them both that _he's_ still mad, too.

_"Mad,"_ he says, mulling again. _"Because of your birthday?"_

She pictures the frown lines meeting over his nose. Can practically hear him trying to work it through. The immediate indication of his own inner child and the inability to reconcile that with her dad.

"That. Because I forgot." There's nothing easy about this, all of a sudden. Nothing exactly hard, either. It's a weird state. Her mind blank, but the words suddenly in her mouth. She doesn't know why she's telling him this. Why now in stilted words. "And . . . this summer. He's mad."

_"Too much togetherness?"_

There's caution in his tone. He's slow about it. Considering and trying not to pile on, but there's a push there, too. Insistence, and they both know there's anger not far at all beneath the surface of this in particular.

"Not enough." She doesn't know why this feels like a confession. Doesn't know why it needs saying out loud—right now of all times—but the scar burns and her fingers itch and her tongue, for once, feels thick with words. "He left pretty much right after he got me settled at the cabin." He's silent. Dead air on the other end that makes her add miserably, "I made him leave."

_"Kate."_ He breathes her name, and then it's more dead air for too long. _"Jesus. You weren't out there_ alone _all that time?"_

"Alone," she repeats. It's true. Literally so, but she thinks of the pain. An infinite store in every cell of her body. Her mind, thick with terrible thoughts, waking and not. It's only literally true. "I felt like I needed to be."

_"Needed? Or deserved?"_

That's a wound. A still-healing laceration of his own, though she hears him struggling. Movement again. Pacing and heavy things he picks up and puts down. He's trying. Weighing what he's angry about and whether he has any right to be, given what they are. Given what they're not.

"Both?" She won't let her voice be small, even though it wants to be. Even though it's a question. "I didn't know until . . ." she breaks off, trying to locate it in time. In ink. This particular epiphany. "I didn't know I thought that I deserved . . . that I still do think that." She closes her eyes and sees a stale bodega cupcake. A single candle burning in it. She thinks about wishes and lets out a breath. "Sometimes. I still think that."

_"Sometimes."_ He's a long time about saying it. It's heavy. Wary and not exactly a wish come true, though it's milder by far than half a minute ago _"Not . . . all the time?"_

He sounds so abruptly hopeful. Plaintive, but willing to believe. She cranes to look up at the clock. Two minutes to midnight. She thinks that might have something to do with it.

"Not all the time, Castle." She hustles the words from her mouth, like they might take the full one-hundred-twenty seconds to reach him. "And I'm . . . working on it."

"I know," he says. Rushing, too, as the clock turns over. "I know, Kate. And that wall doesn't stand a chance."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thanks to those of you still with this.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Thanks for reading.


End file.
